Draft Player Scratches (Feb 6)

The Edmonton Oilers were in to visit the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday morning and it was a return to the press box for Kurtis Foster, who has continued to find himself in Coach Renney's doghouse for some inconsistent and underwhelming production.  Foster only has 12 points in 48 games this season with the Oilers and there was a lot more expected of him when Ryan Whitney had gone down with his ankle injury.

Foster is one of the many disappointments in Clayton C.'s roster this season, but with lingering problems in the forward ranks, Foster remains on this draft team through the second waiver draft and will likely be in and out of the Oilers line-up with some regularity, which will continue to hinder Clayton's ascent out of the basement.

It sounds like a minor upper-body injury was enough to keep Matt Cullen out of the Minnesota Wild line-up on Saturday night, as the team took on the Phoenix Coyotes.  Cullen apparently skated on Saturday morning without issue, but my best guess would be that there was enough discomfort for the coaching staff to just not take any chances with one of their best players this season.  The Wild do not go again until Wednesday night at home, so there is a good chance that they wanted to give Cullen an extra day's rest, just to make sure he's 100% when returning.

It's been an up-and-down for Peter H. this season, being up in 2nd place in Weeks Five and Six, dropping down to 14th in Week Fourteen and now back up to 11th near the end of Week Eighteen, there really isn't a great deal to go on.  His team was low-to-middle of the pack in the jersey race and he should have a healthy team for the third segment, if all goes according to plan.

Montreal Canadiens defenseman James Wisniewski has been battling a pretty substantial bout of the flu this weekend, keeping him out of practice on Friday and having it stretch into Saturday afternoon, when the Canadiens took on the Rangers in a matinée game.  He'll be a game-time decision for Sunday's matinée game against the Devils, but it really wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't able to go.

Wisniewski was one of Larry D.'s final picks in the draft and has been one of the bright spots this season, but since he's only battling a bit of the flu, it shouldn't be a big concern at the moment.  Larry was 50 points out of 1st in the second jersey race, going into the final afternoon of action and the third jersey race is about the last chance for Larry to win anything, since he's now 45 points out of the money.  A healthy everyone will be needed to stay in the jersey race starting on Monday.

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